


one of these days, he'll make one for you.

by lannisnow



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:58:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannisnow/pseuds/lannisnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is the victor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one of these days, he'll make one for you.

**Author's Note:**

> _my boy builds coffins,_  
>  he makes them all day.  
> but it's not just for work,  
> and it isn't for play.  
> he's made one for himself,  
> and one for me, too.  
> and one of these days he'll make one for you.   
> [x](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAs0xcSKvqs)

“These games will be my best,” he says late in the night when she is tangled up in sheets with a sheen of sweat over her body. He is sitting up, staring out the window of a wall into the Capitol where there are mobs and parties excited for the press release in the next morning. Preparing for the third quarter quell.

She was not alive yet when the second was released, but she has heard the stories. Four tributes instead of two. And the first, where the tributes were voted by their friends and family. This year is Seneca’s fourth hunger games, and a quarter quell all to his own. If he lives up to it, his name will go down in history.

Sixty nine children have died under his name, and he is not satisfied. She was almost one of them. She was almost one of them.

***

_How many days had it been since she had eaten?_

_Many._

_It felt like it was much longer than it was. That she was sure of. When she was sprinting through the trees, she had given up. She had been ready to die, ready to meet her fate. The Capitol would claim her life like it claimed all the children before her._

_That was when she saw him, the boy from District 12. And the girl, too. Limping, bloody. She could kill them, easy. He looked sick and the girl, Katniss, was distracted with keeping him walking. She had readied her knife in her hand. If she killed them both, the only one who would be left was Cato, and if she managed to stay hidden, he could die just as easily._

_But the girl from District 12 mentioned food. They were going to hunt and gather. Food. That was what she needed. Food._

***

Of course it was this. For the 75th Hunger Games, it was from the victors that the tributes would be chosen.

She is shaking. Back in District 5, she stands beside other women, women with children, women who thought they were safe. And she is sixteen years old, lives in the Capitol now, but is not pardoned. She has no children, no one outside of him, outside of Seneca, who stands on a hovercraft above her district, ready to bring her home. Everyone looks at her like they would look at a traitor. She abandoned her home, her family. Maybe she is a traitor.

Her name is not called. She breaks down and cries. Her cheek is wet and she rubs it against her shoulder. The crowd stares at her with expectation. To them, she is still the traitor, and she should be the one who dies, not this woman.

She does not volunteer.

***

_They make a camp, a coat laid on the ground. She watches them from across the river, behind a thick tree. The girl leaves to hunt, the boy forges berries._

_It takes just a sight of the dark berries in his palms and she has to bite her lip to keep from laughing. To keep from screaming out. Those berries are poisonous and he is going to collect them, he is going to eat them. She slides down the tree trunk and stares off in the distance._

_Easily, she could let him die. She could let him eat the berries. But then what? The girl would come after her. She is a much easier target than Cato, and the girl from District 12 would know this. If she could get them to fight each other, to disregard her._

_To fight each other._

***

“I told you you would be safe,” Seneca whispers into her hair, smoothing his palm down her back.

“You couldn’t have known.”

“You’re right. I couldn’t have.”

She pulls her head away from his neck and stares up at him. A deep anger hits her, stills her entire body, stops her breath. There is something in his voice that stops her dead-still and he pulls her back into him without a word.

That night, he sits up in their bed. His leg is shaking, twitching restlessly and moving the bed and keeping her awake. Her eyes are shut and she is trying to ignore the way her body vibrates. It takes twenty minutes before she sits up, exhausted and frustrated, and wraps her arms around his chest.

“I think I am going to retire. After this game. Four of them is good, right?”

“You’ve killed the same number of tributes as every other gamemaker,” she says angrily, dropping her arms away from him, moving her body across to the other side of the bed. He is upset because he does not know if he will kill children as well as everyone else killed children.

There are times she forgets that Seneca is just as part of the Capitol as everyone else.

***

_The District 12 boy leaves again. She moves, quick as she can to the berries on the jacket, and she grabs a handful. She moves back, across the river, jumping from rock to rock and moving behind her tree again._

_“I need to look dead. I need to look dead,” she whispers. “I need to be dead.”_

_A cannon goes off in the distance. Who died, who died? Was it the baker’s boy? No, she hears them. She hears the girl screaming for the boy, and then she hears them together. Cato? How? She looks up at the sky. Cato?_

_No. Not Cato. No, that cannon was for her._

_She rubs juice from the berries in her palm on her chin and goes limp. Goes as limp as she can, throws her hand out so it can be seen._

_“Foxface.” They cross the river. Her heart is beating at a million miles an hour, but she stays still, her eyes closed, her breathing stopped. Her life depends on this. The girl, Katniss, takes the berries from her fingers and she feels her heart jump in her chest but she does not move. They leave._

_She is dead. To them, she is dead. They will kill each other, now._

_One day later she is standing in the shadows of the trees, watching muttations attack the girl and boy, attack Cato. She sees a small, red, fox-like wolf go for their heels and she smiles at that. Is that her? It must be. The rest of them are there, and so is she._

_She watches as Cato is attacked, as his body is eaten. She watches as Katniss shoots him and he dies. She watches and waits for them to discover she is not dead._

_There is an announcement, and in front of her eyes the poisonous berries are in the girl and boy’s hands and they count to three and the berries are in their mouths and no one is stopping them. They die in front of her._

_She walks out of the shadows and she is crowned victor._

***

The games start. She stays in bed for days. Sometimes flashbacks jump into her dreams. She did not kill anyone. Not with her hands or her knife. But she saw the bloodbath in flashes through the trees when she was running, and remembers watching the girl and boy from twelve go down together.

Seneca comes back every night, a lazy smile on his face, satisfied with the deaths he’s created. She curls into him and tries to forget how many lives he has taken. She tries to remember that he saved hers. He saved hers with a canon that she asked for, a canon that made for entertainment and saved her life, and he was the first face she saw when she woke up after the games, smiling, smirking, telling her how smart he knew she was.

He saved her life, and that was more than her district had done. No one had volunteered for her. She had no sponsors.

This is his last year, she tells herself. His last year of putting children in coffins before their time.


End file.
